Union Organizing
Definition
Union organising is the practice of building collective worker power in a workplace — through one-on-ones, committee formation, issue campaigns, and (where the legal framework allows) strikes.
It is the most-tested practitioner literature in the organising field: the 1930s-1940s industrial-union organising drives, the 1960s-1970s public-sector unionisation wave, the 1990s-present SEIU / UNITE / Fight for $15 model all share a common craft vocabulary that has been documented in detail in the Labor Notes literature and the AFL-CIO organising curriculum.
It is distinguished from the broader labour-and-union-campaigning term by its workplace scope: union organising assumes a single employer, a defined bargaining unit, and a recognition campaign or a contract campaign as the campaign’s organising form. The Labor Notes Secrets of a Successful Organizer handout library is the single most-used US labor-organising training corpus, covering building an organising committee, mapping the workplace, the one-on-one (organising conversation), charting supporters and opponents, running a house call, leading a contract campaign, steward training, grievance handling, and running an internal union election — the operational form of the “common craft vocabulary” claim. [source: labor-notes-secrets-handouts]
Full page: [[union-organizing]].
FAQ
What is union organizing?
Union organizing is the practice of building collective worker power in a workplace — through one-on-ones, committee formation, issue campaigns, and (where the legal framework allows) strikes. The full-page version of this definition lives on [[union-organizing]]. The union-organizing canon is the most-tested practitioner literature in the organising field.
Why is union organizing the most-tested practitioner literature?
It is the most-tested practitioner literature in the organising field: the 1930s-1940s industrial-union organising drives, the 1960s-1970s public-sector unionisation wave, the 1990s-present SEIU / UNITE / Fight for $15 model all share a common craft vocabulary that has been documented in detail in the Labor Notes literature and the AFL-CIO organising curriculum [source: labor-notes-secrets-handouts].
How does union organizing differ from broader labor campaigning?
It is distinguished from the broader labour-and-union-campaigning term by its workplace scope: union organizing assumes a single employer, a defined bargaining unit, and a recognition campaign or a contract campaign as the campaign’s organising form. The workplace scope is what makes the union-organising craft vocabulary portable across sectors [source: labor-notes-secrets-handouts].
What is the Labor Notes handout library?
The Labor Notes Secrets of a Successful Organizer handout library is the single most-used US labor-organising training corpus, covering building an organising committee, mapping the workplace, the one-on-one (organising conversation), charting supporters and opponents, running a house call, leading a contract campaign, steward training, grievance handling, and running an internal union election — the operational form of the common craft vocabulary claim [source: labor-notes-secrets-handouts].